


Casphardt Week~

by FuryBeam136



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-22 23:22:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21310309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryBeam136/pseuds/FuryBeam136
Summary: My oneshots for Casphardt week! I know I started a day late but trust me when I say I had a good reason
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	1. Day 1: Firsts

Linhardt never liked the sight of blood. It’s always made him feel sick, lightheaded. Even the thought of it is enough to turn his stomach. So standing here on a real battlefield for the first time, with blood on his robes and on his hands, Linhardt isn’t sure how he hasn’t fainted yet. He almost wishes he did faint, just so he wouldn’t have to look at this.

He knew what he was getting into by coming to the academy. He knew. But seeing the death and the blood is so different from knowing it’s going to come. And actually taking a life is so different from knowing you’ll have to.

The smell of burning flesh makes Linhardt’s stomach churn even more than it already was, and he’s not entirely sure what happened in between but now he’s on the ground, choking on the bile rising in his throat. He thinks he can hear someone shouting his name, but he isn’t sure. All he is sure of is that he’s on his hands and knees in the mud and the _blood_ and trying not to empty his stomach into the dirt.

Hands are pulling him to his feet, and Linhardt stumbles, his head spinning. He thinks it’s Caspar. Only Caspar would even try to touch him, filthy and weak as he is in this moment. Linhardt finds himself leaning into the small pillar of strength, his eyes closing against the world that seems more like a spinning smear of blood and dirt.

“Lin, are you hurt?” Definitely Caspar then, the only other person to call him Lin is Dorothea and this does not sound like her.

“No… just tired…” Linhardt hums vaguely. “I want to take a nap. For say… five years or so? Yes. I am very tired.”

“Stay awake for me this time, Lin. Please?”

Linhardt forces his eyes open and immediately regrets it when he sees blood on Caspar’s face, hands, everything. He pushes himself away from his friend, and loses whatever he last ate to the earth below him.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and Caspar’s lifting him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes before he can say another word. He closes his eyes again, arms around Caspar in a vice grip.

“You’re fine, Lin. You’re gonna be great.”

He forces himself not to cry at the words, because damn, he really wants to believe them. He wants to tell Caspar how much those words mean to him, how long he’s waited to hear them.

“This is no place to start getting sappy,” Linhardt says instead, and Caspar only laughs.


	2. 2. Protection

Linhardt doesn't want to kill again. He finds himself desperately fleeing combat, sometimes after it's long over, sometimes when it's still in full swing. He feels sick more often than not at this point, the sight of blood a near constant. He hates war. He hates blood. He hates death. He is weak and sick and sleeping so much less than he's used to because in his dreams he sees blood and he sees Caspar smiling up at him as his life bleeds away from his eyes.

Caspar. That's another problem. The idiot man insists on throwing himself in the way of attacks meant for Linhardt, and always gets away with it because he'll beat whoever he's currently protecting the mage from, and then Linhardt will heal him because he's so afraid of losing him. Caspar's smile makes his chest twist in different ways than the blood does, and he finds he is entirely too weak of heart to deal with it. So he lets Caspar fight for him, tries to ignore the filth of battle all around them, and even when he finds himself fleeing the battlefield in order to maintain some shred of dignity as he empties the meager contents of his stomach onto the dirt, Caspar is right there behind him, beside him.

Until he isn't.

Linhardt isn't sure where he lost Caspar, but he did, and he's terrified by it. He screams Caspar's name into the battlefield, begs his friend to be okay, prays to the goddess even knowing she will not answer. And when he finds Caspar, lying still in the dirt, he runs to his side.

He's still breathing. He's still alive. There are so many enemy soldiers all around him, and something vicious and white-hot grips Linhardt with ferocity. He's barely processed what's happening when there's fire all around him, and his wind spells do nothing but fan the flames. He can hear screaming, and it takes him longer than it really should to realize it's his own.

Bodies lie smoldering in the flames around him, and there's blood all over his hands. He feels sick, overwhlemingly, disgustingly sick, and he can't breathe. Caspar is saying his name. He rushes to Caspar's side at that, fueling as much of his energy as he can muster into healing gruesome wounds.

"Lin... are you okay?"

There are tears in his eyes and he wants to scream, wants to tell Caspar that _no_, he's not okay, _does it look like he's okay?_ Instead, all he does is choke out an ugly sob and press his hands to Caspar's skin with panicked energy he would not have otherwise. He's running out of magic, he's reaching his limit, but he can't stop, he needs Caspar to be okay. It hurts, his body burns with the pain of injuries that aren't his and his head is throbbing, pounding in time with his frantic heartbeat. Linhardt thinks he's screaming again, but he's not sure. Everything is a blur and it hurts but _Caspar has to be okay._

Someone is pulling him away from Caspar, and he's positive he's screaming now, the world is little more than a smear of red and words turn to meaningless noise in his ears, absorbed by the pounding of his head. He just needs to get back to healing Caspar, everything will be fine when he's finished healing Caspar.

His own body betrays him, and he lacks the strength to fight back, to move, to keep his eyes from falling shut. There are tears on his face, there's blood all over him, but he is just so, so tired. He doesn't want to sleep, but his body is heavy and he can barely breathe anyway, his lips are forming Caspar's name over and over to no avail.

Linhardt dreams of fire and Caspar bleeding out and asking why he didn't save him. And when he wakes, his head is still throbbing and his hands are burning. He sits bolt upright, and regrets it somewhat when the world starts spinning and tilting violently.

"Caspar," he breathes, and he can feel tears trying to rise in his eyes but he doesn't let them. "Caspar."

And then a hand is on his shoulder and he looks up to see that smile, and the tears fall anyway as he leans into those strong arms.

"Are you okay?" Caspar asks, and Linhardt shakes his head.

"I'm fine, are _you_ okay? You were... there was so much blood, Caspar, I-"

"I'm fine, Lin. I'm okay. You saved me."

Linhardt cries into Caspar's chest, breathlessly whispering confessions of love until he finds his eyelids growing heavy once again.

"I love you too, Lin. Love you so much."

Linhardt dreams of peace for a change.


	3. 3. Wartime

Caspar knows that Linhardt hasn’t been adjusting to war very well. And he can’t blame him. There’s almost always blood staining someone’s weapons or clothes, and injuries to heal. But Caspar thrives in this environment, while he’s certain Linhardt only wilts.

Linhardt isn’t sleeping nearly as much as he used to, or even as much as he should be. Caspar catches his friend falling asleep during meetings only to wake with a start and wide eyes and parted lips as though he were about to scream.

He catches Linhardt sorting the books in the library late one night, over and over again, by colour, by title, by size, by anything he can find to sort them by until he runs out and starts over again. He takes his friends shaking hands and tells him to sleep, please, because he’s afraid to see Linhardt overwork himself like this. Linhardt only nods and leaves.

It keeps happening until Caspar can’t take it anymore, until he takes those pale, shaking hands in his and screams desperately for Linhardt to stop, to come back to him, because his heart aches and he misses his friend, sleepy, sarcastic Linhardt with his frequent naps and distant eyes.

And Linhardt _cries._

Caspar opens his arms to the boy who taught him how to slow down sometimes, to look around himself and nap beneath the open sky. And Linhardt, with a sob on his lips and tear stained cheeks, falls into the warmth of the boy who taught him to live in the moment. They hold each other as though letting go will mean death, and maybe it would, Caspar thinks to himself. Maybe it would mean death. Letting go would hurt too much to think about. He’d rather not think, not now, maybe not ever.

“You’re going to be okay,” Caspar whispers in a voice that feels wrong on his tongue, sounds wrong to his ears, and yet seems so, so right. “I’m here, Lin.”

“Y-Yeah,” Linhardt replies shakily, and Caspar knows that despite the trembling in his body and the choked sobs in his throat, Linhardt is content to lie here in his arms forever.

When the mage falls asleep, Caspar doesn’t mind. He just runs his fingers through Linhardt’s hair, so soft and gentle on his fingers, and asks himself if maybe he’s in love. The answer that finds him is surprising, although it really shouldn’t be.

Caspar has been in love for years. He just never managed to figure it out.


	4. 4. AU Day

Linhardt is tired. He often is, but today he is even more so than most. He’s been alone and sleeping for so long, he’s begun to long for company. He was always solitary, especially for his kind, but he supposes his instincts have begun to call for him to have company. If only he could manage to leave this place, to hunt his own food rather than the bloodied corpses the folks of a nearby village offer him. Linhardt despises the taste of human flesh, but it’s better than starvation.

When the blue haired boy stumbles into his lair, a bright eyed adventurer looking to make a name for himself by slaying the beast that the townsfolk are ever so afraid of, Linhardt huffs his annoyance and lifts his head. The chains around his neck clatter and he growls his frustration at them.

“If you plan on trying to kill me, I suggest you try being just a little more careful about it,” Linhardt drawls when the adventurer takes a bold step forward. “I may be chained but I still have the reach to eat you up. I’m sure you’d make a good snack while I wait for my next meal.” A lie, of course, but the adventurer probably can’t tell. Linhardt is, of course, growing somewhat hungry. If the boy sticks around too long he might give into that hunger and just eat him despite how sickening it is to eat the people he was once on of.

“They didn’t tell me you talked!” the adventurer shouts, and the beast groans. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Yes, yes, a talking beast, how exciting. Are you going to continue to pester me or are you going to leave?” Linhardt snaps, his teeth bared for emphasis.

“They have you chained up,” Caspar notices. “Why do they want me to kill you?”

Linhardt rolls his eyes. “Didn’t they give you the whole speech about the man-eating beast?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m standing right here and you haven’t eaten me yet.”

Linhardt huffs a bitter laugh. “Yes, you are right. I could easily have swallowed you whole as soon as you walked within range. But I didn’t, because, you see, I find it utterly distasteful to eat humans.”

“So the townsfolk are feeding you humans against your will?” The adventurer seems rightfully disgusted by this. “That’s so weird. Why don’t they bring you whatever it is you actually want? Hey, if I brought you your favourite food, could you give me something to prove to the town that I ‘killed’ you?”

Linhardt’s head is spinning with all the questions. This adventurer sure has a lot of them, and he hasn’t even told him his name.

“I would appreciate not being asked all these questions,” he snaps, and his teeth snap shut like a bear trap. “I am tired, and I am hungry. If you would bring me a meal, just a regular meal, I beg of you, then perhaps I will humour your questions.”

“Okay!” Linhardt is taken aback by how quickly the boy agrees. “I just want to know the answer to one little question before I go!”

“And what would that be?” the beast growls.

“What’s your name?”

He blinks in astonishment. “Linhardt,” he says eventually.

“Cool! I’m Caspar!”

When Caspar runs out of the room with a wave, Linhardt wonders if he will really come back. It doesn’t matter much right now. He settles in for a long nap.


	5. 5. Opposites

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended to more with this but I’ve decided to save that for another time. In case it’s unclear, Caspar and Linhardt are Laguz in this fic (and while Caspar is big buff tiger, Linhardt is a frail little heron)

“Hey! Linhardt! Get up!”

Linhardt groans, raising his head to meet the gaze of the all too familiar tiger boy that stands over him.

“Caspar,” he grunts. “I’m tired. Let me nap.”

“You’re always tired!” Caspar pouts, ears flattening to his skull. “Come on, get up and train with me! That’ll wake you up!”

“It certainly will,” Linhardt wants to snap, but instead he just sighs and sits up, wings drawn about him like a blanket. “Fine. If it’ll get you to leave me alone, I’ll come watch you train. _watch._”

“You’re no fun! Don’t you want to be able to protect yourself?”

“Not particularly, no.” He yawns, and stretches. “Well? Will we get going? I would really rather get this over with.”

Caspar’s grip on Linhardt’s hands as he drags him through the monastery is tight, but not too harsh. Linhardt still suspects the hand will be tender for a few days, damn his fragile body. Caspar insists that if he trains it will grow more sturdy, but he finds he just couldn’t care less.

“Come on! You should try using a weapon!” Caspar is loud and obnoxious, but Linhardt finds he doesn’t mind today.

“No thank you,” he says. “I told you, I just want to watch.”

“Suit yourself!”

As Caspar throws blow after blow into the sturdy training dummies, Linhardt sits with his wings outstretched and watches, humming softly.

He is still quite tired. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a nap. After all, Caspar’s energy won’t be depleted for a while yet.


End file.
